Slashdot Mirror
Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding
An anonymous reader writes "IBM's famous reseach lab for nanotechnology, micoelectronics and exotic science, Almaden Research Center, has released an advanced, efficient, pen-based text input method for mobile computing, that allows you to trace letters on the keyboard to enter a word rather than typing each letter individually. The new technology provides a more fluid, smooth, and natural interaction (see demo ) than tapping on stylus keyboards."
With an acronym like SHARK, it's got to be good!
Also, words like, "mnemonic", "sokgraph", "algorithms" and "morphed" guarantee a high geek-Q.
Unfortunately, another geek/teen-popular word is "random".
I know you're going to get slaughtered for the above, which is a shame because you make a reasonable point but with a bad example. Anyway, I know this is heading offtopic but it comes up a lot on Slashdot. Let me be the first to say:
Dvorak is NOT better than Qwerty.
The original studies that 'proved' the superiority of Dvorak were conducted by none other than Mr Dvorak himself! The tests were repeatedly and ridiculously unfair, in that they compared groups of typists who could never be reasonably compared.
Subsequent fair tests by independent parties have shown that Dvorak is no better once the typist reaches a reasonable degree of experience, and until that point they will perform much worse than on Qwerty if they are transitioning, as would presumably be the case for anyone reading this.
You can read about the total debunking here, and here if you still don't believe me.
Lots of things which are better don't catch on. But like Betamax (vs VHS), Dvorak isn't one of them.
apterous.org